Vietnam on Friday confirmed 82 people positive with the novel coronavirus, marking the largest infections reported in a day from the outbreak of the pandemic in the country in late January.

So far, all local infections of coronavirus in Vietnam are linked to Danang

The daily infections include 45 cases announced in the morning (at 6:00 am) announcement and 37 others in the afternoon (6:00 pm) announcement made by the National Steering Committee on Covid-19 Prevention and Control.

The 82 cases include 26 imported ones, three in Ho Chi Minh City, and eight in Quang Nam, the neighboring province of Danang.

All the local infections are linked to Danang, where the first locally-transmitted case was confirmed last weekend.

Vietnam has so far reported 546 Covid-19 infections, of them 373 have recovered and two, with many pre-existing diseases, died.

Given the surging daily caseload, Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam on July 31 asked authorities to stamp down Danang outbreaks as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, Acting Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long demanded aggressive contact tracing to have a full list of people to and from Danang, mostly from some hospitals in the city.

Health agencies nationwide are maximizing testing capacity for quick detection of the coronavirus. They expect to soon raise the number of tests that is currently around 10,000 units per day.